Sunday, March 11, 2012

Fiorino Gets a Nice Pay Day

A gun-rights advocate whom police stopped for openly carrying a weapon will settle his lawsuit against the City of Philadelphia for $25,000. Mark Fiorino's lawyer said the suit was not about money but about retraining police on open-carry laws.

Fiorino, 25, an information-technology worker from Lansdale, said he had been stopped three times for wearing a holstered gun on his hip. That's legal in Pennsylvania if the gun owner has a permit.

Fiorino recorded one profane police encounter and posted it online. His lawsuit alleged "vindictive prosecution."

I think the joke's on him and all his supporters. Open carry damages the gun-rights movement. Non-gun people, in other words, most people see guys like this as fanatics. The more prevalent they become, the worse the pro-gun folks will be thought of.

4 comments:

A government entity has to pay a fine for violating someone's rights? If that happened more often, we could see fewer violations of rights. We could see a government that respected the people, rather than regarding them as potential criminals and terrorists.

That would throw the authoritarians into a tizzy, of course--another advantage to such an idea.

Many people only see guns on the hips of LEOs or in the hands of badguys in movies. Open carry raises awareness that sane, logical people also carry guns which can be used to stop crimes. The normalization of guns is a worthy goal. Kudos to Fiorino.

"Open carry raises awareness that sane, logical people also carry guns which can be used to stop crimes."

It does no such thing. It only works like that for those already convinced. Everybody else sees this as an act of fanaticism or rebellion. When regular people see a guy with a gun, they naturally want to know if he's fit and responsible, good guy or bad guy. As soon as they ask themselves that question, they realize, it's impossible to tell by looking.